It’s that time of year again. The university is soliciting nominations for Wesleyan’s Binswanger award for teaching excellence. Here’s a little history:
The Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching was inaugurated in 1993 as an institutional recognition of outstanding faculty members. One to three Binswanger Prizes are presented each year and are made possible by the generosity of the Binswanger family that counts numerous Wesleyan alumni, alumnae and parents in its ranks. The standards and criteria for the annual prizes shall be excellence in teaching, as exemplified by commitment to the classroom and student accomplishment, intellectual demands placed on students, lucidity, and passion.
Recommendations may be based on any of the types of teaching that are done at the University including, but not limited to, teaching in lecture courses, seminars, laboratories, creative and performance-based courses, research tutorials and other individual and group tutorials at the undergraduate and graduate level.
Juniors, seniors, graduate students and alumni from the last decade are eligible to nominate up to three professors. Nominations are made through Wesconnect here. GLS students can use their e-portfolio to make nominations. Professors who have taught at Wesleyan for at least a decade are eligible.
You can find out more about the Binswanger Prize, as well as watch or listen to interviews with some previous winners here.
Speaking of great teaching, this week I was able to attend the first lecture in the Center of the Humanities Monday Night Series. The talk by Catherine Malabou was intense, philosophical and very relevant to major issues in the world. The theme this term is comparison, and each week the Center serves up great presentations. On Monday, February 8 at 6 p.m. Wesleyan history Prof. Jeffers Lennox will speak on “Canada, the Revolution, and Creating the United States.”
Check out the new events calendar for a list of various happenings on campus.